Hi Reggie... this kind of brings up the question: are you experiencing a problem with audio quality that you are trying to resolve? If so, maybe someone in the community can help with that. There's a good YouTube video or two on audio setup also.

I have very little SSB experience but have been getting involved more and more lately. With a decent microphone and some setup assistance I've been fortunate to get some good reports or, just as good in my opinion, no comment about my audio.

I have the type of mid-deep voice that is though enough to hear on a telephone but the Flex's equalizer and other audio tweaking tools seems to take care of that issue on the air.

I use the W2IHY 8 band EQ and EQ Plus. I get unsolicited great reports with them but it doesn't mean you can't get very good audio reports straight into the radio. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If running a dynamic studio mic straight into the radio such as the Heil PR40 you would be better served using a small preamp between the mic and radio.

I do not know how the UR6QW stacks up against the W2IHY gear.

One problem people do with EQ'ing in general is try to do very deep cuts in audio. Remember once you remove part of the audio (cut @ a certain frequency), you cannot add that part of the audio back in.

Yep. Works great! On radio setup Phone/CW select +20 dB and no bias. There are some decent default profiles to use. You'll have to change them a bit to use the XLR cable but can save them with an new name and adjust to your liking.

I have used HR781 from beginning with blance connection to radio - no doubts one of the best choise here without additional HW. I used my own profiles with more suppression of the low freq and like Kevin mentioned above with +20db and no bias. However plenty of simple microphones works as well pretty good. Very important in this process is just listen own signal .

You don't need a mic preamp, but if you want the best transmit SNR, then adding one will definitely achieve that goal. But only if it is a quality mic preamp; adding a cheap (noisy) one will make the situation worse.

For audio signal chain management, it is best to generate all of your signal input gain at the first stage so that you do not degrade your SNR by adding gain at later stages in the chain.

Why use external 8-ch EQ when you have an internal 8-ch EQ within SmartSDR. I have a 31-ch EQ from my music days but don't have it in my audio chain because I simply don't need it. Yes, I would be able to more tweak the sweet spots of my voice but I'm not singing a vocal, I'm giving a signal report and some rag chew. Saying that I do put my PR-40 through a tube pre-amp that smooths out my voice the way I like it but is it really noticeable to others? I'd like to think so but really those with good audio ears can only tell the difference. Sell whatever external EQ you have and invest in a better microphone as others have suggested, may I suggest a tube pre-amp, you will be amazed how the EQ in SmartSDR can make a microphone sound.